Nokia's HERE map app on an iPhone. Data in digital maps reveals significant details about where users visit, shop and search, making mapping applications a key battleground for tech companies and marketers. Skift

Skift Take: Location-based marketing is the future of the travel industry. The companies (like Google, Apple and Baidu) that control access to location data via map applications will hold a huge competitive advantage over competitors.

— Jeremy Kressman

Maps and local business info are big business for today’s digital marketing giants.

The ability for marketers to learn where people search, shop and spend money offers a competitive advantage and a huge potential source of advertising revenue. And it’s only getting more important as travelers rely more on location-aware smartphones. One need only look at Apple’s decision to replace Google Maps (despite the resulting product problems) with its own mapping product as an example how important controlling this information can be.

Amidst this growing competitive landscape of map products, Chinese search giant Baidu announced plans last week to add map data for more than 100 new countries to its popular mapping application. With Chinese travelers continuing to wield growing economic power over many travel marketing decisions (last year Chinese tourism spending topped more than $137 billion), there’s huge money riding on whether or not Baidu, or some other Chinese-market competitor, controls this information. Read on for more analysis, plus the rest of this week’s news.

China’s Baidu Announces Expansion of Maps Data to 100+ New Countries
Chinese search giant Baidu is planning to expand its popular mapping service to cover more than 100 new countries around the world. The move comes amidst an environment where more Chinese travelers are venturing abroad and mapping products are getting more important for local businesses and advertisers to reach customers while traveling. Read more

Airlines and Airports Try to Cater to Solo Female Travelers
A new demographic is rising to the top of many travel marketers’ targeting lists: solo female travelers. As more women hit the road, many airports and airlines are looking to add new services to appeal to the demographic, including products like special amenity kits and targeted in-flight magazines for frequent female business travelers. Read more

Crispin Porter + Bogusky Pulls the Plug on Its Turkish Airlines Ad Work
Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the creative agency behind a wildly popular ad campaign for Turkish Airlines featuring Lionel Messi and Kobe Bryant, announced in November it was ending its 3.5-year relationship with the carrier. While the motivation for the decision is unclear, a statement from the agency noted that, “circumstances on the account have become increasingly untenable.” Read more

Motel 6 Tries to Simplify Mobile Booking Process with New App
As more travelers get comfortable purchasing products like hotel rooms using their smartphone, hotel chains have had to adapt to ensure the mobile booking experience was convenient and easy to use. Motel 6 is the latest hotel chain to focus on mobile commerce, updating its app to include new GPS feautures and mobile payment options. Read more

Expedia Launches New Search Tools for Amazon’s Voice-Powered Alexa
Online travel agency Expedia is ramping up its voice search capabilities, launching a new interface for Amazon’s popular Alexa service that lets Expedia customers look for flight updates and search for car rentals. Read more

Skift Take: The travel industry was among the earliest pioneers of online commerce. As Cyber Monday grows in importance for online retailers, it's only natural that more travel marketers are looking to capitalize on all the deal-making.

The benefit of offering such Cyber Monday deals is twofold for travel brands. In addition to gaining a PR boost from offering an incredible deal, the online-only nature of Cyber Monday is also a perfect fit for many travel companies, which often do not have physical locations to offer deals during the traditional Black Friday sale period. With so much marketing opportunity at stake, expect to see Cyber Monday become an even bigger “deal” for travel marketers in the years to come.

Luxury Travel Companies Jump on Cyber Monday Bandwagon
While Black Friday has traditionally be the main draw for deal-hunting holiday consumers, more travel brands are embracing the appeal of Cyber Monday, Black Friday’s online sale equivalent. “Cyber Monday…is almost entirely discount driven and not limited to gifts,” said Taylor Rains, managing partner for Flugel Consulting, an online retail consultancy. “This widens the audience significantly and promotes more traction in the market.” Read more

Google’s Travel Head Shares Tips for Search Marketing CampaignsSearch marketing is a key area of focus for travel brands looking to persuade consumers at the time of purchase. But given the increasing competition for keywords, what makes for a good travel search marketing strategy these days? According to Terri Scriven, Google’s current Head of Travel, tactics like audience segmentation and the company’s Dynamic Search Ads will be important tools moving forward. Read more

Why Hotels Need to Take a Closer Look at Guests’ Social Media Posts
More hotels are focusing their attention on managing online reputation, using platforms like TripAdvisor to monitor and respond to guest feedback. But according to a new study, TripAdvisor isn’t enough. In fact, hotels might be missing out on a significant portion of what their guests are saying about them on social media. Finding such postings using available “geolocation” data may offer valuable insights to help the properties improve service in the future. Read more

Are Chat Bots Good Business for the Travel Industry?
“Chat bots,” tools that let consumers communicate with businesses using a familiar text-message style interface, are seeing a growing embrace in the travel industry (see the British Airways story below). But as the interface gains more attention from travel marketers, more are asking if the tool actually makes good business sense. In fact a range of challenges, like understanding the context and intent of consumer requests, will be critical to chat bots’ success. Read more

British Airways Tests Chatbot With Personalized Travel Offers
Following the lead of carriers like KLM and Icelandair, British Airways is launching a new Facebook-based chatbot that will offer London-bound travelers a range of city itinerary suggestions and exclusive deals. Read more

New Report Highlights the Importance Image Strategies for Hospitality
The consumer dominance of image-focused social networks like Instagram point to the growing importance of compelling images for travel brands in the hospitality sector. But as a new study points out, finding “pretty pictures” is no longer enough to stay competitive. Instead, hospitality marketers need to think proactively about strategies for sourcing, managing and measuring ROI on the use of such images. Read more

Skift Take: Young people aren’t one monolithic group: an 18-year-old is very different from a 34-year-old. The travel industry needs to act smarter and start thinking in subsets.

— Patrick Whyte

Consumer-focused companies have become increasingly obsessed with targeting millennials.

Travel brands in particular have spent millions of dollars on trying to entice 18- to 34-year-olds to buy or use their products — but according to Clayton Reid, CEO of global marketing firm MMGY, they are getting it all wrong.

“We as marketers are spending more and more money against this monolithic group and I would categorize that in some ways is a rabbit hole, unless you’re specifically looking at the behaviors themselves,” said Reid, who was speaking at Skift Global Forum in September in New York City.

Reid gave the example of actor and singer Justin Timberlake, who, during his time in the millennial age bracket, passed through several different stages: boyband member, movie star, and father.

Instead of targeting millennials as an age group, Reid believes it is more useful to focus on micro-segments within the category.

Suggestions from MMGY included HENRYs (high earners not rich yet), young people with a large amount of disposable income who could become tastemakers for a brand, and Jet Sweaters, amateur athletes who travel without their families.

At this year’s Skift Global Forum in New York City, travel leaders from around the world gathered for two days of inspiration, information, and conversation for panels as well as solo TED-like talks on the future of travel.

The launch of Airbnb's new Trips product suggests the company has broader ambitions to own travelers' whole research and purchase experience. Airbnb

Skift Take: For now, Airbnb Trips is mostly a threat to the tours and activities sector. But it's not much of a stretch to imagine the service evolving into a full-blown online travel agency in the near future.

— Jeremy Kressman

While plenty of travel industry observers are already speculating about how the new service might impact businesses operating in the tours and activities sector, one topic that hasn’t been discussed is the impact on airlines.

While it’s true that Airbnb has made no public plans about its move into flight booking, Trips is the first step in a larger strategy to own a bigger share of consumers’ entire digital travel experience. That’s not good news for airlines, many of which have long struggled to build ongoing relationships with travelers that last beyond any single flight.

Will Airbnb evolve into the industry’s newest online travel agency? What should airlines do to counter this impending, if still murky, threat? Read on for more thoughts, plus the rest of this week’s marketing news.

What Airbnb Trips Means for the Airlines
The recent launch of Airbnb’s Trips product might not seem like it has much to do with the airline industry. After all, the accommodations-sharing company is essentially selling tours, not flights. But as it matures, Trips will end up being part of a broader strategy by Airbnb to own more of the relationship with travel customers for everything from restaurants to flights. Read more

Expedia Tests New Documentary-Style Ad Campaign
Expedia, like many of its peers in the travel industry, has long focused its advertising on very functional product benefits like price and service. But as competition for customers continues to increase (and budgets stay the same), Expedia is rethinking this approach. The online travel agency is testing a new series of documentary-style short films it plans to adapt for TV campaigns in Europe starting next year. Read more

What’s the Future of Location-Based Marketing?
Location-based marketing, as Skift noted earlier this year, appears to be having a moment. Not only do more consumers have powerful location-aware smartphones with them at all times, more powerful sensors embedded in the physical world are making it easier for travel marketers to track and target customers. How might technologies like augmented reality and the “Internet of Things” impact the field in the years to come? Read more

Connecticut Tourism Partners with NetflixConnecticut Tourism is teaming with Netflix on the streaming service’s reboot of the popular TV show Gilmore Girls. The state, which played a prominent role in the original series, is launching a website and film locations map on its website in hopes of encouraging show fans to book trips. Read more

New research suggests the travel path to purchase may be more complicated than marketers originally thought. G.L. Barone / Flickr

Skift Take: Search advertising continues to dominate travel ad budgets because it's extremely effective at converting shoppers into buyers. But new research on travelers' "path to purchase" suggests travel marketers should question this assumption, finding that earlier stages of the booking process may be equally influential.

— Jeremy Kressman

The longstanding focus of marketing efforts in the travel industry has been on the point of purchase.

That’s one reason why search advertising, which has been extremely effective at driving customers to buy, has always played such an important role. But based on the results of new research, we may need to give this assumption a second look.

The release of a new study from Expedia Media Solutions and comScore, which suggests travel buyers may be more receptive to ads earlier in the booking process rather than at the end, throws this assumption into doubt. The question for marketers to ask is this: are search ads more effective because they perform better than other types of advertising? Or do they seem better because it’s easier to measure consumers’ response to them? Read on for more analysis, plus the rest of this week’s stories.

New Study Says Ads Have Most Impact During Early Stages of Booking
Travel ad spending has historically focused on “direct response” tactics like search advertising instead of “brand” tactics like TV commercials. That’s one reason why Google’s search ad products continue to dominate industry spending: they help convert customers when they’re ready to buy. But are search engines getting too much credit for sales during a complex booking process? New research suggests travel marketers should take a broader look at the entire marketing funnel as they think about how to drive sales. Read more

How TripAdvisor Transformed from a Content Company to Booking Company
TripAdvisor has always been known as one of the world’s foremost travel review websites. But it wasn’t until recently, with the launch of its instant-booking feature, that the company began to move into the travel e-commerce space. This interview with TripAdvisor CMO Barbara Messing offers insight into how the company’s goals and strategy have changed as TripAdvisor has shifted more toward bookings. Read more

Qantas Tests VR App to Excite Passengers Pre-TripVirtual reality is a key area of interest for travel marketers, but many also worry about its scalability. One travel brand that’s embraced the possibilities of VR is Qantas, which just launched a new VR-focused app for Android and iPhone smartphones that previews various Australian destinations. Not only can users check out these destinations, but they can also book flights from right in the app. Read more

Carnival Launches New Digital Photo Tool With Facial RecognitionCarnival is adding a digital twist to its longstanding tradition of taking souvenir photos of guests during cruises. The cruise line is digitizing photos, enabling a new search feature and enabling facial recognition to help guests find (and hopefully purchase) photos more quickly. Read more

How Hotels Can Use AI to Help With Destination Discovery
Too often, the online hotel purchase process is easily commodified based on factors like price and location. This difficulty is a key reason why Leading Hotels of the World is using artificial intelligence to try and take back control of the booking process, using the technology to highlight the company’s unique destination experiences. Read more

]]>207012New research suggests the travel path to purchase may be more complicated than marketers originally thought.G.L. Barone / FlickrThe Evolution of the Like Button — Digital Marketing News This Weekhttps://skift.com/2016/11/11/the-evolution-of-the-like-button-digital-marketing-news-this-week/
Fri, 11 Nov 2016 12:00:57 +0000https://skift.com/?p=205981

Skift Take: "Like" buttons could be the solution for hotels, airlines, and other types of travel companies eager to gather guest feedback during the trip. Consumers are already accustomed to the idea, so it is definitely worth further testing.

— Jeremy Kressman

While most of us think of the now-ubiquitous ‘like’ button as something you do on Facebook or Twitter, increasingly it is making its way outside social media.

Thanks to the power of the “Internet of Things,” which is connecting various consumer goods like appliances with the Internet, more of these “like” buttons are showing up in the real world.

As crazy as it may sound, the idea has some legs in the travel industry, where passengers and guests could immediately provide instant feedback on all kinds of product experiences, ranging from the check-in process to food service. Will more travel brands experiment with these types of real-world “like” buttons? How might they work? Read on for more details.

Marriott Experiments with New Real-World ‘Like’ Buttons for Hotels
One of the biggest changes in marketing over the past several decades is the growing importance of data and customer feedback in making decisions. But in industries like travel, getting that data can be tricky: Executives in the hotel, airline and cruise industry often have to wait until after a trip has ended, or when a nasty message shows up social media, to know there’s a problem. That’s why Marriott’s test of real-world “like” buttons could prove to be an interesting tool to gather real-world feedback. Read more

New Study Says 90 Percent of Airports are Testing or Already Using Proximity Beacons
Earlier this year, Skift discussed the revolution in proximity-based beacon technology currently happening in airports around the world. More airports are using the tech to provide on-site navigation, provide flight updates and deliver relevant content to passengers in terminals. Now we have further proof. A new study suggests 90 percent of airports now either have a beacon system in place or are testing a future rollout of the service. Read more

Intercontinental Hotels Experiments with New Podcast
Thanks to podcast sensations like Serial, more marketers and media brands are taking a closer look at this audio-based format. Intercontinental is one company experimenting with podcasts in an effort to cut through the clutter of traditional marketing messages. “You look at the space now, and it’s so crowded — not many brands are creating their own editorial content, so we thought it was a point of differentiation,” said Georgina Forster of Mirum, the agency that created the podcast for Intercontinental. Read more

Ryanair CMO Discusses Mobile, Metrics and Innovation
European low-cost carrier Ryanair has long succeeded by shaking up the industry and questioning traditional airline industry orthodoxy. But the company also recognizes its historically “brash” approach didn’t always translate into an ideal customer experience. In this interview, Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs talks about some of the digital innovations the company is using to improve its business and customer image. Read more

Is Food Now the Luxury Category’s Top Status Symbol?Food tourism has become an important component of many destination marketers’ promotion strategies. But why has food become such a key area of focus? According to one recent analysis, it’s due to larger shifts in how consumers perceive different “status” symbols, as more travelers look to unique food experiences as key method of expressing their identity and values. Read more

Marriott Launches New Print Magazine Targeting Millennials
Marriott, which launched its first digital travel magazine to much fanfare in 2015, is continuing its push into the editorial world. This week the company announced an extension of its digital magazine concept, launching a new digital magazine initiative that builds on its Travel Brilliantly campaign to target millennial travelers. Read more

With Google’s and other competitors’ apparent gains as a backdrop, TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer’s briefly mentioned during the company’s third quarter earnings call Wednesday that “market and competitive forces at play” have impacted the company’s difficult transition toward becoming a hotel booking site. His remarks highlight how the hotel metasearch competitive climate is apparently heating up.

In classic hotel metasearch, companies such as Google, TripAdvisor, Kayak and Trivago display hotel listing from chains, independents and online travel agencies, and collect revenue from these partners when consumers click on links and navigate to the hotel or online travel agency sites for booking. Google, TripAdvisor and Kayak, meanwhile are also branching out from such lead referrals and are processing hotel bookings on their own sites for partners, which pay a commission or pay per click and handle customer service.

Google, Kayak and Trivago

In a note to investors November 9, Raymond James analyst Justin Patterson writes that TripAdvisor’s margins may be inversely impacted next year by increased marketing spend, as well as heightened competition from Kayak and Trivago.

“Our concern is that this coincides with more commentary on competition in the prepared remarks [from TripAdvisor], implying Trivago and Kayak may be contributing more pressure than in the past,” Patterson wrote.

Patterson probably should have added Google to that competitors’ list given Google’s increased traction in hotel search.

Kayak’s CEO Sees It

“Of course, Google is taking share from TripAdvisor,” Kayak CEO Stephen Hafner tells Skift. “Google sits upstream from TripAdvisor and they are intercepting more consumers into their Hotel Ads product. Trivago and Kayak are having an impact, too, as we are more aggressive in marketing than TripAdvisor.”

That relative aggressiveness in marketing may be one of the reasons that TripAdvisor’s Kaufer said yesterday that TripAdvisor would be ratcheting up its paid marketing in 2017.

Google’s Updated Website for Hoteliers

Google’s gains in hotel search come in tandem with a Google announcement today that it has updated a website that supports hoteliers looking to participate in Google’s Hotel Ads product.

Hotel Ads is Google’s hotel metasearch product. But unlike Kayak, TripAdvisor and Kayak metasearch, Google’s Hotel Ads are located right in the search engine without consumers having to navigate to a separate website.

Pictured above is a Google Hotel Ads unit with paid ads for the Lotte New York Palace from Booking.com and Hotwire.com.

Google’s hotel and online travel agency partners have a choice whether to compensate Google via pay-per click or commission models. Partners can pay Google when consumers click on one of the Hotel Ads links or can choose to pay a commission once the consumer completes their hotel stay. The latter payment system is similar to Booking.com’s model in some respects.

New Features and Partners

Among the new features in Google’s updated Hotel Ads website is a feature to search for and filter third-party integration partners to manage hoteliers’ campaigns. The list now includes 47 third-party integration companies, including featured partners Phobs, Wihp, Sabre, Seekda, Trust and TravelClick.

The site is geared toward independent hotels that might need the services of third-parties to handle the rigors of their Google Hotel Ads efforts.

The site now includes a search feature to ensure the third-party partner is authorized to work with Google on Hotel Ads.

Travel Search On Google Rather Than Through Google

One such Hotel Ads integration partner is Koddi, and co-founder and president Nicholas Ward says Google’s increases in hotel-search traffic indicates an important changed role for Google.

“For many years, a huge portion of travel research has touched and gone through Google,” Ward says. “I believe this growth is an indication that more travel search is starting to happen on Google instead of just going through, which seems to be in line with their goals given all of their innovation in the space.”

Ward says Google is getting more efficient in “walking users through the research process.”

“In the past year, we’ve seen them [Google] effectively guiding users from regional and destination queries to navigational and hotel-specific queries with their newer travel features,” Ward says. “Today as a user, I can search for ‘fort worth,’ and then click through to a secondary search that brings up ‘fort worth hotels,’ and then end up on a hotel-specific result set and it’s pretty seamless. This allows for a lot of growth in hotel searches even if the industry isn’t up at the same level.”

Google denies that it is becoming an online travel agency and there are ample reasons for it to stick with its hotel advertising business instead of becoming a full-fledged online travel agency such as Expedia or Priceline given the mammoth size of Google’s hotel advertising revenue.

Google already plays a key role in travel research and reports that 58 percent of leisure travelers and 68 percent of business travelers begin their travel booking and shopping in a search engine.

But, if Koddi’s Ward and others are correct, Google is certainly inserting itself even more boldly into the travel research process.

After speaking on stage at the Skift Global Forum in New York City in September, Oliver Heckmann, Google’s head of travel products, provided more insight into Google’s strategy in a backstage Skift Take Studio.

The launch party for Roads & Kingdoms' new podcast "The Trip." The company enters a saturated podcast market. Roads & Kingdoms

Skift Take: In the same way that R&K has made the world larger with its travel reporting, expect them to do the same in this new form.

— Colin Nagy

The podcast world is getting more saturated by the day.

A medium that started with a casual “two people and a mic approach” has grown into the media trend du jour, with large publishers and creators seeking a slice of the action.

Yet, podcasting is still a medium where meritocracy counts, and one can still build up a following based on considered effort, editorial merit, and embracing the intimacy of sound.

The founders of Roads and Kingdoms, a site focused on foreign correspondence through food, music, and culture, are throwing their hat in the ring with what they think is a differentiator. Their proposed answer is to invest heavily on nuanced sound and professional production value to bring travel stories to life.

Launching in early 2017, the site’s new podcast “The Trip” is focused on travel stories and structured as six-week “seasons.” The first installment is underwritten by Tiger Beer with cameos from contributor Anthony Bourdain and an assortment of the types of tales you’d tell over a late night drink in a far-flung locale.

The site’s co-founder, Nathan Thornburgh, who will formally host the podcast, describes the product as “the audio equivalent of what we do on the page. Think full-bleed audio for your ears — immersion is the goal. Things like binaural audio is very interesting to us to try to get more texture in the moments … to make you feel like you’re there.”

He suggested they are working on a lot of well-produced sound from on-location, sound-scaping and trying to paint vivid pictures of their reportage — think 30 seconds of a night market in Bangkok — without being “too art-house” about it.

The podcast aims to be a sponsored extension of what is developing to be a strong, niche travel voice that is still not as well known as it should be in the industry, given their recent output.

At a time when a lot of travel reportage feels dumbed down, general, and geared towards pageview bait (I’m looking at you Conde Nast Traveler Facebook posts), Roads and Kingdoms invests in original stories from talented writers that find angles not being covered elsewhere — especially tough when it seems anything interesting is being strip-mined and packaged by the Vices of the world.

The Bourdain effect certainly helps bring credibility to a growing voice — the noted writer and CNN talent is an investor and regular contributor — but it comes off more close fit rather than a forced celebrity name on the door. And it is clear that their interests and passions for travel are deeply aligned.

Recent stories have included a Q&A with an Afghan fixer, highlighting the often unrecognized work from those who help foreign reporting happen; a story highlighting the limbo of refugees in Hong Kong; as well as a couple fighting for Pakistan’s LGBQ community.

Their food and drink coverage is phenomenal, with recent pieces on the Osaka Sake scene, and different and highly unique breakfast rituals around the world.

Niche-minded brands, looking for influence and nuance over scale are taking notice, and the site has been experimenting with producing sponsored content as an additional revenue stream. If the site can get the audio “experiment” right as Thornburgh smilingly underplays it, an educated, worldly and podcast obsessed audience looking for a sharper voice in travel will be likely to follow.

Instagram is getting more commerce-oriented and is testing new features to make it easier for marketers to sell products to users. Pictured, Alba Ramos (instagram.com/sunkissalba) started a Spanish-language only beauty channel from her New York City home. Facebook Inc./Instagram

Skift Take: Whether we're discussing Instagram or conversational "chat bots," more travel brands seem to be experimenting with ways to make online commerce more social. The question is, do consumers want that too?

— Jeremy Kressman

This week, we’re talking about social commerce.

With Instagram testing a broader rollout of “shoppable” buy now buttons, and many travel brands experimenting with conversational chat interfaces, a new wave of social-focused commerce seems to be taking off in the travel industry. These tools represent an evolution from previous methods of online selling, in that they let consumers utilize information like word of mouth and offer more “conversational” methods of finding and buying products (rather than searching a database).

But even as social commerce gets more attention, some marketers remain skeptical. Not everyone is convinced Instagram users want their photo browsing “polluted” with product pitches. And striking the right balance with chat bots between helpful and “creepy” is still a work in progress. How might social commerce evolve? Read on for more details.

Instagram Tests New Social Commerce Rollout
Instagram is already one of travel marketers’ favorite social platforms. But it still has one glitch: it’s more difficult than travel brands would like for consumers to “take action” on the inspiring photos of beaches and mountains that show up in users’ feeds. That all may change soon, thanks to a new feature being tested with a select group of retail brands. Read more

Testing the Potential Benefits of Travel Chat Bots
Similar to artificial intelligence, travel chat bots are getting lots of attention from travel marketers in 2016. But not everyone is sold yet on their effectiveness. Why use an automated bot to book a flight when a travel agent can do it just as quickly and cheaply? One frequent traveler decided to put the chat bot concept to the test and came away pleasantly surprised by the results. Read more

How easyJet Integrates Artificial Intelligence to Help Improve Operations
Artificial intelligence is the new “bright shiny object” for the travel industry, with numerous marketers mentioning the discipline as a key area of interest and experimentation. But how are travel companies actually using AI to generate meaningful results? UK carrier easyJet is one travel brand experimenting with AI, using it to help passengers more quickly fill out forms and to determine how much food to load on flights. Read more

Delta Introduces New Mobile App Bag Tracking Feature
The technology behind bag tracking continues to improve. Not only are there now consumer products that give travelers more DIY tracking options, more travel brands are also integrating bag technology into their own infrastructure. Delta is the latest airline to make bag tracking mainstream, adding a new feature to its mobile app that lets customers follow their bag’s progress. Read more

Google Tests New Programmatic Ad Tool with Travel Brands
Programmatic advertising, an automated ad buying technique that offers marketers new methods to buy and sell inventory in real time, is seeing soaring popularity with marketers. But its one major failing is that because it’s automated, it’s difficult to run campaigns with custom creative elements, like so-called “native” ads. That may be changing thanks to Google, which is testing a new program with Hilton and others to run native ads using programmatic. Read more

Data Science Grows in Importance for Travel Marketers
The field of data science, which combines statistics, social science, computer science and design, is gaining growing appeal with travel marketers. As more companies are overwhelmed by the glut of “big data” entering their computer systems, these data scientists are helping them to make sense of the numbers and create actionable business plans. Here’s how hotel chain Accor uses data scientists in its own strategic decision making. Read more

]]>205185Instagram is getting more commerce-oriented and is testing new features to make it easier for marketers to sell products to users. Pictured, Alba Ramos (instagram.com/sunkissalba) started a Spanish-language only beauty channel from her New York City home. / Facebook Inc./InstagramYelp Gives Up on International Growth, Layoffs Probablehttps://skift.com/2016/11/02/yelp-gives-up-on-international-growth-layoffs-probable/
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 19:45:34 +0000https://skift.com/?p=204944

Yelp will refocus its efforts on growing its business in North America after struggling in Europe. Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is pictured here in 2013. Demo Conference / Flickr

Skift Take: Yelp struggled outside North America, and is giving up on developing its business abroad. Competing against business listings from companies like Google and TripAdvisor has taken its toll on the company.

— Andrew Sheivachman

Yelp will greatly reduce its investment in sales and marketing efforts outside the U.S. and Canada after disappointing results have led the company to refocus on product development in North America and shift its efforts towards a more long-term approach.

The strategy change could lead to the dismissal of up to 175 Yelp employees.

“While our domestic business continues to thrive, it’s become apparent the changes in the international distribution environment have impaired the near-term growth prospects of our business overseas,” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman on the company’s Q3 earnings call this morning. “As a result, we have decided to scale back investment outside our domestic market. This was not an easy decision as it may impact up to 175 of our valued employees abroad. While they perform their jobs admirably, our strategy has not panned out.”

The company will stop international sales and marketing potentially as soon as today, according to Stoppelman, since foreign accounts represented only one percent of Yelp’s revenue in Q3. Yelp’s international listings and apps will remain available, in case the company wants to give international growth another try in a few years.

As of the end of 2015, Yelp had a presence in 31 countries outside the U.S., and it generated 2.2 percent of its revenue from abroad. That percentage has been falling over the last couple of years.

Going back to last year, 70 to 80 percent of Yelp’s accounts have been returning customers, which also hastened the decision to abandon business development abroad. Yelp executives tried to spin the cuts as an attempt to refocus on Yelp’s core products.

“We’re in a kind of a nice position right now, where there are a lot of levers in the business that are really clearly driving growth,” said Charles Baker, Yelp chief financial officer. “So, we’re going to continue to invest in product both on the consumer experience to make it captivating and engaging, and also on the business owner side, really trying to make Yelp the sort of daily place that businesses are connecting with consumers.”

The company’s domestic business, however, is strong.

Mobile, in particular, is driving Yelp’s business now; Yelp’s mobile app usage grew 24 percent year-over-year, now representing 70 percent of the company’s total page views. Engagement, transactions, clicks, and page views are higher on mobile than the web, continuing the company’s focus first discussed earlier this year.

Stoppelman also hinted that Yelp will look to push into new verticals, but wouldn’t specify any areas the company is currently planning to enter.

]]>204944Yelp will refocus its efforts on growing its business in North America after struggling in Europe. Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is pictured here in 2013.Demo Conference / Flickr